Department of History Highlights, 2015-2016
Highlights in History
Faculty:
Ronald Calinger (CUA Professor Emeritus) published Leonhard Euler: Mathematical Genius in the Enlightenment (Princeton University Press, 2015).
Jennifer Davis (CUA Assistant Professor) published Charlemagne’s Practice of Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2015). She will spend the fall 2016 semester at the American Academy in Berlin as a Berlin Prize winner, and the spring 2017 semester as a member of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.
Jennifer Paxton (CUA Clinical Assistant Professor) presented the all-day program “Ireland and Britain: 800 Years of Conflict” at the Smithsonian Institution.
Stephen West (CUA Associate Professor) appeared on C-SPAN American History TV to discuss the experiences of former slaves in the aftermath of the American Civil War as part of the series “Era of Civil War and Reconstruction.”
Julia Young (CUA Assistant Professor) published Mexican Exodus: Emigrants, Exiles, and Refugees of the Cristero War (Oxford University Press, 2015).
Alumni:
Christopher Concannon (CUA B.A. 1989, J.D. 1994) became President and Chief Executive Officer of BATS Global Markets, Inc., the second largest U.S. stock exchange.
Paul DelPonte (CUA B.A., 1983) became Chairman of the Board of SeniorNet, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide older adults education for and access to computer technologies. He is also a member of the Commission on Aging for Montgomery County, Maryland.
Melodie Harris Eichbauer (CUA Ph.D. 2010; Assistant Professor of History, Florida Gulf Coast University) was awarded a Collaborative Research Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies for her project, “Codes, Communities, and Church: The Cultural Contexts of Medieval Law.”
Melinda Jetté (CUA B.A. 1991; Associate Professor of History, Franklin Pierce University) published At the Hearth of the Crossed Races: A French-Indian Community in Nineteenth-Century Oregon, 1812–1859 (Oregon State University Press, 2015).
Michael Lonergan (CUA B.A. 1988; Head Coach, Men’s Basketball, George Washington University) led GWU to victory in the final of the 2016 NIT postseason tournament.
Heidi Zeich (CUA B.A. 1996) was appointed Associate Dean of Students at CUA.
Students:
Samantha Aurilia (CUA senior) won the 2016 John Zeender Prize for best senior thesis, entitled “Contradictions and Coalitions: the Anti-Rape Movement in the United States, 1968-1975.”
Conor Boland (CUA junior) has won a Padnos Museum Internship at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids, MI, for the summer of 2016, working in collections management and learning the “ins and outs” of the museum field. “I look forward to spending the summer assisting the Museum in its mission to preserve the memory of and propagate material relating to Gerald R. Ford’s presidency.”
Daniel Cooley (CUA junior) spent the summer of 2015 as a Department of State intern at the U.S. Embassy to the Vatican in Rome, where he worked with diplomats in the Political Section, drafting communications and gaining insights into the responsibilities of a Foreign Service Officer, the career he intends to pursue after graduation.
Rebecca McCarron (CUA junior) interned in the fall of 2015 at the Washington office of Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest honors society, gaining experience in publishing and preparing six articles for The Key Reporter relating to liberal arts education.
Joseph Prego (CUA junior; pitcher for the Cardinals baseball team) was named to the 2015 Landmark Conference Spring Academic Honor Roll.
Maria Rodriguez (CUA senior) is now working part-time after interning during the summer of 2015 in the public relations department at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, D.C. “History taught me that even the most mundane of details can yield the most exciting of stories.”
Clare Whitton (CUA sophomore) enjoyed her semester in Rome in fall 2015 so much that she decided to stay there for another, to study the art, history, and architecture of the Eternal City. Her current independent study is on Caesar Augustus’s Rome: “Where else can you study the Forum of Augustus in the actual Forum of Augustus?”
Julie Yarwood (CUA Ph.D., 2016) accepted an appointment as Assistant Professor of U.S. History and Catholic Studies at the University of Mary in Bismarck, ND.